Or I should say that devices that receive transmissions were never a problem and those that transmit have been at such low power for decades now that they haven't been a real issue. Just that no one at the FAA wanted to actually re-evaluate the data until now.

Especially now, that airlines can make money of selling in-flight wi-fi...

Quite honestly I'm surprised Skymall didn't have lobbyists fighting this move. With everyone able to read an eBook or play their favorite game turning taxi/takeoff - when will anyone have time to browse their overpriced impractical products? /s

This is actually a good, solid, evidence-based decision. Good work FAA!

Now I'll sigh while people praise the psycho-spiritual benefits of the government forcing people not to use their equipment for no particular reason and demean others who might want to take advantage of the new rules as technology addicts and wimps...

Quite honestly I'm surprised Skymall didn't have lobbyists fighting this move. With everyone able to read an eBook or play their favorite game turning taxi/takeoff - when will anyone have time to browse their overpriced impractical products? /s

This was sarcastic, but probably not too far off the mark. Still, they'll be fine. I'm always surprised by the number of people who seem to get on flights wholly unprepared, simply staring at their seat back for hours at a time. SkyMall is safe.

Quite honestly I'm surprised Skymall didn't have lobbyists fighting this move. With everyone able to read an eBook or play their favorite game turning taxi/takeoff - when will anyone have time to browse their overpriced impractical products? /s

This was sarcastic, but probably not too far off the mark. Still, they'll be fine. I'm always surprised by the number of people who seem to get on flights wholly unprepared, simply staring at their seat back for hours at a time. SkyMall is safe.

It's also pretty entertaining in it's own right. I mean, who knew you could improve your short game while sitting on the can?

It's only when flying in the US that this has ever mattered. You haven't had to turn off your electronic gizmos for a long time in other parts of the world. If leaving your cellphone powered on during flight was in any way dangerous jihadists all over the world would be dropping aircraft out of the sky all the time. I don't think I've ever turned my cell off while on a flight.

Quite honestly I'm surprised Skymall didn't have lobbyists fighting this move. With everyone able to read an eBook or play their favorite game turning taxi/takeoff - when will anyone have time to browse their overpriced impractical products? /s

Skymall has a website and mobile apps. If anything, this probably will lead to more orders from bored passengers.

Regulators who go into Scare Mode, should not be in the position they are in. The original implementation of this regulation should have been tested and proven.

On the other hand I am a bit worried about the recent news this year (here)about the navigation systems being unencrypted and vulnerable to injection. Before the approval to reverse the regulation at hand, it would have been easy to spot someone "hacking the system", but now they wouldn't really stick out.

I have a feeling that the reversal of this regulation had something to do with money earned from in-flight purchases.

Hope phone's still come with flight mode. Its great for squeezing extra juice out of the battery!

This ruling does not eliminate the need for a flight mode- you still cannot use your cell transmitter on the plane only WiFi and Bluetooth.

True, but the nature of the "airplane mode" toggle on most phones might need to change. I'm pretty sure you can already turn LTE, 3G, WiFi and Bluetooth all off or on independently from one place or another in most phones, but the quick-and-easy access airplane mode button typically just shuts the whole shebang off. At least initially, I suspect vendors will probably just relabel that icon to something more generic, and try to market it as a battery saving feature... but what they'll probably need to do eventually is adjust the airplane button to be configurable, so that users can specify exactly which set of features they want to toggle with that button.

Skymall has a website and mobile apps. If anything, this probably will lead to more orders from bored passengers.

Yes, they do... and if you've ever downloaded their app, you probably immediately deleted it at wheels-down. (I know I did.) It's freakishly huge, because (by the nature of the beast) it had to store all of the media on the local device, instead of relying on the internet for data.

Perhaps now, SkyMall will release a "Lite" version of their app, which pulls data from their website and isn't so big.

Edit: On second thought, it appears that they may have already responded to this issue, as a quick glance at the app in Apple's store seems to indicate that it's less than 6MB in size.

I don't advocate for the need to be perpetually on your devices, but I am way more against a stupid rule that causes a lot of trouble for stewardesses to enforce (mainly because we know it's stupid so no one bothers. Your monitors are on, but our devices cause crashes?)

Let people decide if they want to read their kindles or your in flight magazine.

Also, I'd like to point out that they NEVER enforced this rule in first class. Only the poor had to follow it.

And now the hyperconnected youth won't be going through withdrawal symptoms for a few minutes at a time.

#firstworldproblems

I like to travel only with an e-reader for entertainment when possible. This just means I don't need to read the advertisement magazine (or buy one for myself) for take-off and landing. Seems pretty win win even for those of us who don't want to post on Facebook 24/7...

And now the hyperconnected youth won't be going through withdrawal symptoms for a few minutes at a time.

#firstworldproblems

I was alive when dinosaurs roamed the earth, and I hate having to turn off my Kindle below 10,000 feet. It never made sense to me that my e-reader or mp3 player was a risk to the plane, while an LCD playing airline advertising on the back of every seat was not. This is a welcome change for everyone.

Thank goodness. I have always been more than a little annoyed that my ePaper-based Kindle, with WiFi off, was treated like an emitting device. The dang thing emits about as much as a newspaper in that state.

You could tell that this rule was nonsense because they relied on voluntary compliance. If the FAA thought that there was any meaningful risk of electronics causing problems then everyone would have had to either give up their devices completely on boarding, hand over removable batteries, or somehow reliably demonstrate to the flight crew that the device was completely powered down.

The last 10 years or so of people rolling their eyes and putting their iPad/iPhone screens to sleep for the required 20 minutes during takeoff/landing made for a pretty successful safety test I think.

So does that mean they won't switch off the inflight entertainment too? You know I think one of the reasons people complain about not being able to turn on their device is also partially due to the airlines switching off the inflight entertainments and people ends up just sitting there without anything to do - they've already flipped through the magazines in the front pockets and read their paperback so all they can is just sitting there twitching their thumbs. If they let people use the inflight entertainment systems they probably don't have to go through this whole approval thing to begin with.

You could tell that this rule was nonsense because they relied on voluntary compliance. If the FAA thought that there was any meaningful risk of electronics causing problems then everyone would have had to either give up their devices completely on boarding, hand over removable batteries, or somehow reliably demonstrate to the flight crew that the device was completely powered down.

The last 10 years or so of people rolling their eyes and putting their iPad/iPhone screens to sleep for the required 20 minutes during takeoff/landing made for a pretty successful safety test I think.

Exactly. If it was unsafe, the devices would be tagged, then collected in a lead-lined box. Hell, if it was unsafe, I'd gladly volunteer my device for that safekeeping.

Quite honestly I'm surprised Skymall didn't have lobbyists fighting this move. With everyone able to read an eBook or play their favorite game turning taxi/takeoff - when will anyone have time to browse their overpriced impractical products? /s

I'll make a point to read that catalog no matter what. I need to know about the recent advancements in yard gnome technology, thank you very much.

Headphones during take-off and landing still seem like a safety issue -- at least those not connected to the airplane's entertainment system (which can be overridden for emergency instructions). I would hope that is still banned.

What's interesting is the amount of ignorance on this subject. The reason this doesn't matter as much anymore is that aircraft designed with wifi usage in mind, and those modified for wifi usage, are far more robust. The shielding requirements are better (and the principal source of headaches in modifying older aircraft for wifi usage), the testing requirements are more stringent, etc. The fleet has become much, much better with regard to this type of EMI susceptibility over the last several years.

I just spent a couple days reading through several Boeing electrical requirements documents and the footprints of the changes are all over them.

Edit: Also, PED batteries are the something that's going to get more attention eventually. Li battery fires are unpleasant.